Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @08:05AM
from the only-the-most-confusing dept.

achowe writes "The 22nd International Obfuscated C Code Contest opens 2013-Aug-01 03:14:15 UTC through to 2013-Oct-03 09:26:53 UTC. The rules have been updated, in particular Rule 2 (size rule) has changed. The draft rules and guidelines are available online. In addition there is now an IOCCC Size Rule Tool to aid with counting the secondary size rule. Questions and comments for the Judges can be emailed to q.2013@ioccc.org and must include 'IOCCC 2013' in the subject. Or contact them via Twitter @IOCCC."
Anyone planning on entering?

None of the software I write in C# crawls along like a dog. Notwithstanding the fact that.NET uses JIT (Just In Time Compilation) [stackoverflow.com], if you're doing something with a time constraint that's not met by.NET, you're either doing it wrong, using the wrong language or using the wrong hardware.

Seconded. I have written low level drivers in C#, and they keep up with the hardware just fine on old (Core 2 laptop processors are now old?!) machines, with numerous devices. In fact, the SQL throughput in.NET is pretty impressive. Admittedly, I miss pointer arithmetic, and the ability to read a byte array as (for example) an int32, but I don't miss the inevitable chaos that ensues from that... All in all, I think a good move for the software apart from the fact that I doubt it will be portable to mono..

Why would you not blame the tool if the tool itself is the problem? This whole "blame the user not the tool" meme is stupid as hell. There are plenty of tools that are made that are just plain bad and they deserve the blame they get.

While I agree perl can be written readable, and I do try to do that whenever I am writting perl... it also has so much syntactic sugar and idiom that writing obfuscated perl is a bit too easy.

I used to give people a perl code test that included the line:

"split//;"

Where else can you operate on one variable, save your result in another, and specify neither? Never mind functions that operate differently depending on whether or not they are called in scalar context.

7) The obfuscated C program must be an original work that you own.
You (the authors) must own the contents of your submission OR
you must have permission from the owners to submit their content
under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
(CC BY-SA 3.0) license (see rule 18).

I disagree, there are size rules so you cannot . No one expects to use the code written for this competition for any practical purposes. "C" is such a powerful language that whenever you go through the code samples from winners, you will find something that surprises you even though you have been using C all your life.
A more relevant analogy would be who can best drive in NASCAR in reverse or on two wheels or something but you get the point.

Actually, if you take a look at the entries, it's not really poor code, just highly skilled code.

Of course, if you've been in software development for any time, you'll realize that it's not the poor coders that do the crappiest hardest to maintain code, it's the prima donna ones that use all sorts of strange tricks that make code unreadable. At least poor coders generally produce bad code, but there's an honest effort that goes into it (like using the wrong sort, or not using an API that would've made life

Retrospectively,Aug. 1 is the birthday of Otto Toeplitz, German mathematician, author of The enjoyment of mathematics. Selections from mathematics for the amateur (with Hans Rademacher).Oct. 3 is the day Edouard Lucas, French mathematician, known for his study of the Fibonacci sequence, died.

At least one of the judges (^chongo^) was a contributor to this very site many moons ago, not sure if he's still here. (Had|Has) some fine prime number & math pages.

I strongly suggest taking time to look at just what previous entries have been able to do, including print musical notation, a working spreadsheet implementation, and a flight simulator. With obfuscation & size limits.

Ahhh memories. Never could enter myself though, can't even write normal C with any proficiency.

I send all the C that I write to IOCCC. When they get back to me with failures to understand and/or run it, I know it is OK to release to the general public. It is the greatest development system I've ever found, and it costs me nothing. Who needs beta testers when I can just submit my code to IOCCC?